Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

We're fighting some lead times right now and are redrafting boards to accommodate substitutions. This is becoming a global problem and will probably add a week or two (OH NO!) to the January 30 date.

Right now we have about 1700 pre orders. We don't want to build too many on the first run lest we run into a problem. But we intend to build enough to fill the orders. Once the first run is built and shipped we should be able to build as many as we can get orders for. It's a tricky game when you are spending 1/2 million bucks on a new product first run..

the good news is, hopefully Chinese New Year (Week of Feb 14th) wont affect you since you are building in the USA. However, some of your components are likely sourced in Asia.

Having to redraft to change parts is unfortuate. Hopefully its a low risk change so the validation with the new parts is minimized.

Thanks
Russell

:o Oh no, Another two weeks!! I appreciate the work Paul and company are doing but it just means I need to troll these boards another extra two more weeks.. sigh.

Hey Paul. Sorry to hear about your lead time issues. I know we had the same thing as a consumer electronics manufacturer.

One thing we did to relieve it on our end (to keep from having to have several board revisions), was to use dual (even triple) footprints, to account for hard to acquire parts. Of course, this is more difficult to do with power parts, if that is what you are having troubles with, due to the large footprints, and copper required to dissipate heat. We were able to actually make some dual TO-220/TO-247 to allow us to use either part, in different cases, for instance, a lower power model, versus a higher power model. We then populated the board with different parts, based on which model it was. This also allowed us to obtain a better price on boards, due to the volume.

Not exactly your case, but just thought I'd mention it. I see you are using PICs as well. They are my favorite uC of choice right now, mainly because I learned how to use them in college. They seem pretty popular, even though Cypress, Reanus (sp?), and others are trying to get a foothold. The Cypress line (PSoC) have some really neat capabilities built into them, that PIC and others just don't have (or require additional components). They even have some nice RF solutions as well.

For me, I don't mind the wait. I'd like to have them ASAP, but want them to be right. I am still actually trying to decide what to get. I've even thought about getting a strobist setup to tie me over, maybe adding a 430EX II to my 580EX II, and getting some Nano tripods, umbrellas, and some Cyber Syncs...not sure what to do. I did get out the 580EX II the other night, to try out the Stroboscopic (sp?) mode, which was cool...of course, I picked up the closest thing to try it out with... I also did not angle the flash enough away from the background, so my background started to turn gray on me, but not bad for a first try.

I specified multiple footprints for some parts. But some parts have only one or two vendors and no substitute parts available. We haven't seen this global parts shortage since the 70s and 80s . . . but were seeing it now.

Have the Einsteins entered production yet?